Engaging children and young people

Our guidance and best practice examples can help you collaborate with children, young people and their families to create a healthcare service that meets their needs - at local and strategic levels.

Get involved

As a paediatric health professional, you'll know how important it is to engage children and young people (CYP) in your healthcare settings. It's one of the key training principles in Progress+. How can you get started, develop your skills or share learning?

Scroll down this page to explore our resources. You can also sign up for our regular, informative eBulletin or find out about the committee that drives our work.

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How can you effectively engage children and young people in your practice? To co-produce improvements to their care, and to shape policy and practice? We're here to support you.
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It's important to know this information so you can advocate for improved consultation on service design, support challenging conversations and protect CYP rights.
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We seek out children and young people's thoughts, feelings, ideas, concerns and expectations around health and healthcare, and work together to create a service that meets their needs. Here's how.
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Our 'voice bank' is a rich source of children and young people's ideas, concerns and expectations. It can guide strategic planning and organisational change. You can use ours and create your own locally.
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We offer practical tools and advice on how to communicate with CYP and their families. This covers different topics, such as mental health, hidden health and children in care.
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Get inspired and learn from the successes (and challenges) of projects! Our varied examples include Youth Social Action, Rainbow Health Youth Supporters and Epilepsy12 &Us.

RCPCH Engagement Academy: our services and engagement standards

We offer a range of resources, guidance, coaching and bespoke packages to help health services and organisations effectively and confidently involve children, young people and their families.

We have also produced national engagement standards, which cover five areas: Trust and rights, Inclusive, Practical arrangements, Community reach and Take action.

Finding people to work with

Our map and listing of youth councils, clubs and parent carer forums around the UK may help you find participants to work with you to design healthcare improvements.

For epilepsy services

We engaged CYP and their families around the UK to develop free resources for paediatric epilepsy services. It explains a model that helps you create a listening culture, gives tips on getting started (even when you're busy), provides easy-to use communication cards and shares case studies.

Upcoming courses and events